Almost Human
by aces
Summary: Fitz is, after all, only human.


Notes: So kbk wanted more Fitz, and I did promise to write something if she posted the Fitz/Oz, and it was two a.m. and I was in a weird mood listening to loud music, and this happened. Isn't it strange how that goes?  
  
Warnings: Fitz uses inappropriate language for a younger audience. Also, Doctor/companion conflict. Whee. Oh yeah, and it's not slash. Though there might be overtones. Subtext? Whatever.  
  
Almost Human  
  
Had he ever gotten high before?  
  
Fitz wasn't sure. He couldn't remember that far back. That was centuries ago, some other Fitz Kreiner's life. That Fitz Kreiner had worked in a stupid plant shop and played guitar and sung in crappy little underground pubs and worried about people finding out about the truth about him, whether it be the crazy mum or the German dad. This Fitz Kreiner was much older, more mature, in his thirties, and saved the human race/planet/galaxy/universe on a regular basis.  
  
This Fitz Kreiner was determined to get off his face.  
  
He was uncomfortable in the dance club; it was too ahead-of-his-time for him, even if he'd spent an awful lot of his time out of his time, in Sam's and Anji's time. The music was weird in his ears, a bit too heavy and crude for his taste, but still somehow strangely appealing. He didn't think it was the music that was making him feel so old. He thought it was the people.  
  
They were so *young*.  
  
He'd been twenty-three once, hadn't he? Twenty? Twenty-eight? He'd been young and human and dancing once, surely. Wearing black leather trousers and a bright, shimmery silver shirt had made him self-conscious once but in a good way, yeah? He hadn't been worried all the time about lines around his eyes and that grey hair he'd found while brushing just before coming here, surely.   
  
Fitz was determined to find another plane of thought tonight.  
  
He just wanted it to be simple. He just wanted it to be simple. Like smoking pot for the first time, or getting that first buzz ever from alcohol. He didn't want to have to think about side effects, or all those times his brain had been fucked around by chemical substances or seriously weird aliens, or piling on another addiction. He didn't care. He didn't care that he was thirty-three going on three sodding thousand and should have been a bit wiser, a bit older, a bit more sensible, about this. Sensible was for old geezers. Fitz was only human.  
  
He ordered himself a drink at the bar and took it to a miraculously empty table and sat down to drink before getting himself on the dance floor. All for courage, he told himself, as he looked about at the dancers and other club-goers with trepidation. He wasn't sure he could get his body to move like that. He wasn't sure his head could stand much more of those lighting effects. He wasn't sure he liked this watered-down beer.  
  
But at least the music was growing on him.   
  
He could kinda see what all these kids saw in the music, and he winced when he realised he'd just thought of them as kids. But there was a sort of buzz to the music, there was a sort of high-effect just from that electric guitar, and those drums, and that voice, and that techno stuff. It wasn't groovy, it wasn't Hendrix, but it was—-sexier. More confident and more desperate than they'd been back then.  
  
He remembered that much, at least. Or he thought he did. Maybe he was just remembering what he'd read in a book sometime.  
  
He drained his drink and he stood up and he manoeuvred himself sheepishly onto the dance floor. And he closed his eyes, and he didn't let his fingers feel for the chords of the song currently playing because that would just look silly, and he began to dance.  
  
He was awkward at first, but he quickly got the hang of it, and the beer started kicking in, and his sweaty hair was soon hanging in his grey eyes, and his shirt was soon plastered against his body, and thought was finally leaving his head and letting instinct take over, and maybe it wasn't quite the other plane of thought he had wanted, but right now it was suiting him just fine. No need to think when the beat was right there, telling you where to go, what to do, how to feel.   
  
Fitz could dig this.  
  
And eventually he did get a bit of something; what, he wasn't entirely sure, as it was new for the time and he was ancient for the time, and by that point he didn't really care and didn't even really notice when he amiably took the little pill and swallowed. It was just part of the dance, really, the never-ending dance and strangely he still felt thirty-three going on three sodding thousand and so decided to dance some more to get rid of the feeling.  
  
And that was how the Doctor and Anji found him, dancing, dancing, dancing frenetically and unstoppably to the groovy non-groovy music. He couldn't think of a word for the music, not a good, modern word, he could only think of groovy, even though it was all wrong, but it didn't really matter as he was too busy dancing.   
  
It's like evolution, he thought as he moved, only backwards. Or maybe it's like religion? Where's a Greek god when you need one…hey, would that mean an orgy?  
  
The Doctor appeared in front of him, unmoving among the throng, and Fitz shoved straggly, sweat-wet hair out of his eyes. "Hullo," he said, "come to dance?"  
  
The Doctor nudged him off the dance floor to a miraculously empty table, bar Anji, who was looking at Fitz with either disapproval or disbelief; it was hard to tell in this funky lighting. "Hullo," he said to her with a grin, spilling into a convenient chair. "Have you come to dance too?"  
  
Anji snorted, maybe, but she didn't answer verbally, instead turning pointedly to the Doctor. The Doctor was not looking at Fitz.  
  
"Either of you thirsty?" Fitz asked brightly. He half-rose. "I'm dying for a pint. Get you anything?"  
  
"Anji," the Doctor said smoothly, "why don't you get us some drinks? Preferably non-alcoholic," he added without changing tone.  
  
Anji glanced between the two of them and nodded, slipping out of her chair and maneuvering efficiently to the bar. Fitz slid back into his chair and wiped again ineffectually at the sweat on his face.  
  
"What did you take, Fitz?" the Doctor asked quietly, still in that smooth, controlled voice. Fitz liked that voice. It made a nice counterpoint to the frenetic, exultant lack of control in the music surrounding him, threatening to drown him in a good way.   
  
"What d'you mean?" Fitz asked.  
  
"What substance did you take?" the Doctor continued.  
  
"Dunno," Fitz shrugged. "It was small, I think. A pretty shade of white. Why?"  
  
"Why did you do it?"  
  
"Oh, that's easy," Fitz said. "I wanted to play at being a young, stupid human for a night."  
  
The Doctor tossed him a sharp look, but Fitz was too far away on another plane of thought to care. He grinned back at the Doctor and slouched in his chair, head cocked slightly to listen to the music.  
  
"Not very wise, Fitz," the Doctor said.  
  
Fitz shrugged. "That was the point, right?"  
  
Finally he didn't feel thirty-three going on three sodding thousand. He wasn't really remembering twenty-three, or twenty, or twenty-eight, either; he wasn't really remembering playing a guitar at crappy little pubs underground, because this was far too different from that time, but he'd found his high and he was happy.  
  
The Doctor leant forward, right across the little table, hands clutching its surface, and looked directly into Fitz's grey eyes. "Why'd you do it, Fitz?"  
  
Fitz shrugged again. "Why do you care?" he countered.  
  
The Doctor's body was rigid; there was no curve in his spine as he leant over the table, just a straight angle. Pale skin gleaming in the jumping light, blue eyes burning. Fitz leaned forward himself, almost bumping noses with the Doctor. "You're looking awfully tense," he said confidentially. "Why don't you do a bit of dancing yourself? Might loosen you up."  
  
Anji came back with three drinks. The Doctor stood up without looking at her. "Would you mind staying here, Anji?" he asked her, still not looking away from Fitz. "Fitz and I will just be a few minutes."  
  
He lifted Fitz up by the arm and led him out of the club. Fitz waved back jauntily at Anji, giving her an amiable shrug when she gave him an inscrutable look, and then she was hidden behind the crush of people and then they were outside.  
  
It was cold, and Fitz's jacket was still inside. He looked around the street, feeling the nip of air as refreshing against his overheated, sweaty skin. His shirt was becoming clammy. His trousers clung uncomfortably.  
  
He felt glorious.  
  
The Doctor was checking his pupil reaction with a penlight, feeling his pulse, feeling his chest as if he could check the heart with just the palm of his hand. There was a set look to the Doctor's face, and slowly it dawned on Fitz that the Doctor was Pissed. Off. It made Fitz smirk for some reason.  
  
He was a couple inches taller than the Doctor, so the Doctor had to look up to glare at him. "Why'd you do it, Fitz?" he repeated.  
  
"The music's fab, you know," Fitz said. "The drinks are crap, but the music's heaven. You really ought to go back in there and give it a try. Just one song. You might like it."  
  
"Fitz, what'd you take?"  
  
Fitz sighed. Obviously he wasn't going to get the Doctor back inside and dancing if he didn't answer the Doctor's questions. "I told you, I dunno," he said patiently. "It doesn't really matter. I came here specifically to get something, and I did, and I at least am perfectly groovy. You could maybe do with something yourself, Doctor," he added suggestively.  
  
"Fitz, you idiot!" the Doctor burst out and Fitz took a step back, blinking. "You don't know what you could have done to your body! You don't know how you'll feel tomorrow morning, or even how long the effects of—this—this—might last! Why did you do such a stupid, foolish thing?!"  
  
Fitz was beginning to get irritable. He couldn't really hear the music from out here, just the occasional auditory glimpse of sexy, addictive drumbeat whenever the club doors swung open to let another pair or group of people in.   
  
"Because it is a stupid, foolish thing," he said. "Can we go back in now?"  
  
"No! That's not a reason, Fitz!" The Doctor gave him an almost pleading look. "Tell me why you did it really."  
  
Fitz closed his eyes, and now he could almost hear the music again, could almost feel the groovy non-groovy beat pulse under his fingertips, in his hips, against his heart. There was an itch in his head now, and his feet were restless. "I wanted another plane of thought," he said. "I wanted to get high. I wanted to get off my face." He opened his eyes again and stared at the Doctor directly, folding his arms across his chest because the cold was finally starting to get to him.  
  
"Why?!" the Doctor shouted.  
  
"It's a human thing," Fitz told him.  
  
The Doctor blinked. There was no-one around on the street at the moment, and the closed club doors were keeping the music from reaching them. Water glistened on the pavement, misted in the streetlights. The Doctor was a shapeless mass in shadow, head floating over black velvet. It was actually kinda cool, in a creepy way. But Fitz was getting restless.  
  
"What?" the Doctor asked.  
  
Fitz was impatient. "You wouldn't get it."  
  
"What?" the Doctor said again.  
  
"You're not human." He said the words almost cruelly. "You wouldn't get it."  
  
The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "So it's a human thing, is it?" he asked softly.  
  
Fitz nodded and looked back at the entrance to the club longingly.  
  
The Doctor was suddenly right up against him, backing him into the brick wall behind him. Fitz blinked down at him, for a moment forgetting about the music. "Why don't you explain it to me?" the Doctor asked, staring up with cold blue eyes.  
  
"It's not worth it," Fitz said, wishing the Doctor would back up a little, give him some room. "You lived on the planet for a hundred years solid and you still never got it. How the hell can I explain it to you?"  
  
"Explain what?" The Doctor's words were soft, so soft, and there was a strange sort of music in his voice that Fitz had never noticed before, and he wondered if he only noticed it now because he was on a different plane of thought. And, see, that was exactly what he wanted, exactly what he'd needed, so maybe it was alright he was stuck out here with the crazy alien while the music was out of reach inside, because the crazy alien had his own music anyway and maybe that's what he'd subconsciously been following all along ever since he stepped into the TARDIS.  
  
"It's a stupid human thing," Fitz said, and his voice was almost dreamy. He closed his eyes again and heard the distant drumbeat and he could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips, in his toes, itching in his restless head. "Want something different. Want a new experience. Want to get my arse kicked and not by an alien this time. Crave a release." He opened his eyes and smiled down at the Doctor. "Maybe you do kinda get it, come to think of it."  
  
"You don't need chemical substances for all that." The Doctor's tone was cold enough to blow a freezing breath of air across Fitz's mouth, and he shivered.  
  
"Yeah, you do," he said. "I did, tonight. I needed to remember I was a stupid fucked-up human." He spread his hands out and grinned. "What better way than this?"  
  
He wondered if the Doctor was going to hit him.  
  
Instead the Doctor pushed away from him, pacing frantically in the dead street. Fitz inched toward the club entrance. "I'll never understand humans," the Doctor was muttering to himself. "I'll never understand their self-destructive tendencies."  
  
Fitz snorted and the Doctor pinned him with blue eyes. "Oh, yeah, I suppose your self-destructive tendencies are more noble since you go around trying to save people," the human said innocently. "Doctor, you're an adrenaline junkie. You just crave a different release."  
  
The Doctor glared at him. Fitz took a step toward him. "I know what I'm doing," he said. "Well, actually, I have no sodding clue what I'm doing, but as that was my plan, it's moving along beautifully. See, I'm rediscovering my roots. I'm not twenty-eight, and this isn't London in 1963, and I don't have a stupid job at a plant store to go back to tomorrow morning, but this is the closest damn approximation I'm going to get anytime soon, and this is probably the only chance I'll even get that close." He was running out of breath, and it was hard to speak fast enough to catch up with his thoughts. His head was starting to spin, to hurt, with the hurtling speed and amount of thoughts in it right now, and he wondered if his brain was expanding. That wouldn't be too cool, come to think of it. His skull was definitely not bigger on the inside than the outside. "I'm *old*, you old geezer," he spat out. "I'm as sodding old as you are, and I shouldn't be. I've forgotten as much as you have. You're not the only one who's lost your life from before. You might get it back someday. I'll never get the fucking chance."  
  
He was panting, and light-headed, and the itch was moving all along his spine. The Doctor was staring at him wide-eyed, and he laughed suddenly and found he could breathe again and it didn't quite hurt so much. "I told you you wouldn't get it," Fitz said frankly. "It's a stupid human thing."  
  
He headed back to the club and stopped right outside the door. He was close enough he could hear the music, the electric guitars and synths and drums and crashing chords and raw voices. His ears pricked up, his heart rate increased, his fingertips pulsed and his feet were restless. The cold had dried out his shirt and hair and trousers, and he felt ready for another round. He turned back. The Doctor was standing exactly where he'd left him.  
  
"Come back in and join us if you like," he said quietly, voice carrying in the dark. "Maybe you'll learn what it's like to be a stupid human."  
  
Fitz went back inside, wondering if Anji would like a dance. 


End file.
